Revelation: The 7 Churches Part 1 - Revelation 2
THE HISTORICIST APPROACH: REVELATION SURVEYS THE WHOLE OF CHURCH HISTORY
Those who teach this view believe that God revealed the entire church age in advance through the symbolic visions of the Apocalypse. For example, the breaking of the seven seals (chs. 6–7) is often said to be the barbarian invasions that sacked the western Roman Empire. The scorpion/locusts that come out of the bottomless pit (ch. 9) are the Arab hordes attacking the eastern Roman Empire, followed by the Turks, represented as the horses with serpents for tails and flame-throwers for mouths. “The beast” (ch. 13) represents the Roman papacy.
A unique characteristic of this line of interpretation is its advocacy of what is called the “year-for-a-day principle” when dealing with designations of time in Revelation. It is believed that God revealed literal and exact time periods, but cast them in a symbolism that represents a year as a day. On this principle, five months (150 days) is taken to designate 150 years.
2. THE PRETERIST APPROACH: FULFILLMENT IS IN THE PAST, SHORTLY AFTER THE TIME OF WRITING
Among those identifying themselves as preterists, there are two types:
1. Many exegetes whose method is actually literary-critical have chosen to label their approach as preterist or, alternately, as contemporary-historical. The writers to whom I refer are not preterist in the evangelical sense. They are referred to by Pieters as “Left Wing” of preterism. They apply the term to themselves because they believe that contemporary elements of John’s own day can be identified in the symbolic language he uses.
THE FUTURIST APPROACH: EVERYTHING AFTER CHAPTER THREE AWAITS FULFILLMENT IN THE FUTURE
The futurist approach is held by the majority of the most popular contemporary evangelical writers and Bible teachers. It has so dominated the Christian media, in fact, that many Christians and virtually all non-Christians are unaware even of the existence of other approaches. The best-known version of futurism today is that of dispensational theology. This is the camp of J. N. Darby, C. I. Scofield, Clarence Larkin, Charles Ryrie, John Walvoord, Hal Lindsey, and many others. The principal difference between the dispensationalist view and other futurist views of Revelation would be the fact that the former places the rapture of the church at Revelation 4:1, while other futurists would place it later (e.g., in chapter 19).
According to this view, Revelation divides into three sections, defined in 1:19, where John is told to write “the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be after these things.” Following this outline, chapter 1 describes the first division, or the things John had seen, which was the vision of the glorified Christ on Patmos. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the things “which are,” that is, the present realities of the churches (or the church age), and everything after chapter 3 describes events, which were not only future at the time of writing, but are still future from our own standpoint. The majority of the material (chapters 6–19) is thought to describe a seven-year (or, alternatively, a three-and-a-half-year) Tribulation period, followed by the return of Christ (chapter 19), a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth (chapter 20), and the new creation (chapters 21–22). Futurists, like historicists, often understand Revelation to be chronologically continuous, though some futurists see two parallel sections of Revelation (chapters 4–11 and chapters 12–19), both of which describe a future time of tribulation.
Belief in the futurist approach frees the reader to take a more literal view of the visions, reducing the difficulties of interpreting the symbols.
4. THE SPIRITUAL APPROACH: NO SINGLE FULFILLMENT; ONLY TRANSCENDENT PRINCIPLES AND RECURRENT THEMES
I am using the label spiritual approach to include all approaches that do not look for individual or specific fulfillments of the prophecies of Revelation in the natural sense, but which believe only that spiritual lessons and principles (which may find recurrent expression in history) are depicted symbolically in the visions. Though this kind of approach is sometimes associated with theological liberalism, it is entirely consistent with a high view of inspiration of Scripture, and there are many commentaries by theological conservatives who believe that John had the visions revealed to him exactly as he claims, but who believe that their meaning is to be spiritually understood in a sense that would be edifying to believers of any age.